Posts from the ‘Ireland’ Category

The Piping season is in full swing in Northern Ireland with several competitions already having taken place. This Saturday see`s the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association Northern Ireland Branch Tyrone championship take place in Dungannon followed by the Mid-Ulster Section competition on 12th June as always held in Cookstown High School playing fields. There are a plethora of events taking place with an itinerary on the RSPBANI website ( http://www.rspbani.org/viewcalendar.php )

The RSPBANI has a new promotional video produced in association with Tourism Ireland:

THE Maiden City Festival in Londonderry seems to get better every year and, while its success in tackling misperceptions about the Apprentice Boys of Derry may be difficult to quantify, it is nevertheless without question. There is a belief that the lack of major confrontation and organised protests during Apprentice Boys parades these days is not just due to a process of negotiations under the auspices of the Chamber of Commerce, but to the proactive steps taken by the Loyal Order to promote itself and its history.

Current Assembly Speaker, William Hay is one of those who has played a part in securing successive agreements on parades in Londonderry and he is in no doubt that the Maiden City Festival has had an impact.
“It’s been a hugely successful initiative, and one that deserves more funding to ensure it keeps growing, funding that will allow the organisers to plan further ahead.

“What the Maiden City Festival has done is help educate the wider community on the culture and history of the Apprentice Boys; it’s led to a better understanding of what the organisation is about. It’s a symbol of hope in this city in terms of parading,” said the Foyle MLA, who is himself a prominent member of the Apprentice Boys.

The Maiden City Festival is described on its website as “a showcase for Protestant culture of tolerance and openness, and for the heritage that is entrusted to the Apprentice Boys of Derry. The Maiden City Festival is the way in which the Protestant community of Londonderry, a minority community, is able to make a contribution to the life of the City and to the diversity of cultural expression”.

That contribution has so far been considerable, and what makes it even more impressive is that it has worked so well despite limited funding.

While funding has sometimes been an issue, with the festival having to rely on obtaining funds from one year to the next, it’s safe to say that it delivers terrific value and has grown considerably since it was first mooted as a way of correcting misperceptions that Protestant culture was all about parading. William Hay is not the only person to believe that it’s been a significant success story, as more and more local organisations see a dividend from participation.

Highlights have included Bluegrass on the Walls, and a tribute to William Love, performed by the Black Skull Corps of Fife and Drums. And one of the other initiatives that has proved popular – and is therefore being expanded – is Culture Bite, a diverse range of lunchtime performances in cafés and lunch spots; another aspect deemed worthy of expansion is the Siege Story, which offers a way of more fully exploiting the historic backdrop of the city’s walls.

One of the organisers, David Hoey said: “We are looking to expand the diversity section in terms of growing our Culture Bite cafe/ lunch programme.

And with the Siege Story we are hoping to provide short performances around the walls, enhancing the attractiveness of the walls as a tourist feature.”

He said the thinking behind the festival was to show how much Protestant culture could contribute to civic life and, despite changes in funding, it was working.

Mr Hoey said: “When we started it was the height of the parades issue and one of the important things we believed was that we needed to get away from the notion that Protestant culture was only parading. We wanted to show the Protestant community had something very positive to contribute to civic life.

Commemorations are an important part of the week but the festival itself is part of the cultural footprint of Londonderry.

“We had around £10,000 from the Community Relations Council the first year and around that from the city council, and funding has gone up and down, but we have a festival that’s three or four times bigger.
“We also have learned to extract cultural value from the resources that are already there. Also, in 1998 we were on our own, but now there is much more collaboration and we are hoping to work on building on that in future years. We always wanted it to be the foundation of something we could grow.”

Growth is measurable – while sections are expanding, the number of visitors going to the Memorial Hall, with its exceptional museum, grew considerably last year.

Hopes are high of even greater success this year, as the Maiden City Festival organisers have embraced modern media, with a website, a Youtube channel, a weblog, and a presence on Facebook and Flickr.

While the main events take place over a one-week period in August, work goes on in the background pretty much all year round, not least recently in terms of making the most of high tech developments and the social networking opportunities afforded by the internet.

“We have developed a substantial web presence and have launched a podcast,” added Mr Hoey.

“It’s a matter of progression. If you include the Apprentice Boys of Derry, our web presence is getting 120,000 visits a year. Our Youtube site has had 30,000 views in the past year. We have 25,000 visitors engaging during the festival week but the number has been expanding. This has been our first big year of a web presence, and we will be tracking the impact of that,” explained Mr Hoey.

The hopes are that people will now know much more about the history of the Apprentice Boys or the Maiden City Festival and will see that Londonderry is worth visiting in August, with the promise of excitement, entertainment and spectacle over that week in August, leading up to August 14 when the Relief of Derry parade gets under way.

Asked whether the festival had achieved everything hoped of it when it was first envisaged, Mr Hoey said its contribution has been “significant”.
He added: “People are more prepared to take a look.

I think demonisation has gone, and we are moving into better understanding.”

2013 has become an important date in Londonderry, due to the bid to become UK City of Culture and the Maiden City Festival is developing ambitious plans, that can be more fully explored once this year’s event has passed. And those plans will hopefully be developed whether or not Londonderry wins the UK title.

Mr Hoey concluded: “We have 2013 in our sights…we have an exciting project on our hands for 2013. We are always trying to plan ahead and change the shape of things – a festival needs to be constantly changing. We are always looking at what offers potential, and then making it reality.”

Found this interesting collection of images on Mark Thompson`s Flickr as well as an interesting new blog post about his newly published leaflet `Sir Thomas Smith’s forgotten English Colony of the Ards and north Down in 1572` to be launched in Ards Arts Centre (the old Town Hall) on Friday 14th May. Published through Loughries Historical Society (and without the help of Mr Balmoral the booklet would never have happened!), with the printing funded by Ards Borough Council, North Down Museum and the Ulster-Scots Community Network, it lifts the lid on what was going on in the Ards and north Down before the Lowland Scots arrived with Hamilton and Montgomery to settle exactly the same region in May 1606. The booklet has 40 pages in total, and is lavishly illustrated throughout with some very rare maps and portraits which took ages to track down. You can read more about it here:- http://ping.fm/2Qd3z

<img src=”pFound this interesting collection of images on Mark Thompson`s Flickr as well as an interesting new blog post about his newly published leaflet `Sir Thomas Smith’s forgotten English Colony of the Ards and north Down in 1572` to be launched in Ards Arts Centre (the old Town Hall) on Friday 14th May. Published through Loughries Historical Society (and without the help of Mr Balmoral the booklet would never have happened!), with the printing funded by Ards Borough Council, North Down Museum and the Ulster-Scots Community Network, it lifts the lid on what was going on in the Ards and north Down before the Lowland Scots arrived with Hamilton and Montgomery to settle exactly the same region in May 1606. The booklet has 40 pages in total, and is lavishly illustrated throughout with some very rare maps and portraits which took ages to track down. You can read more about it here:-http://clydesburn.blogspot.com/2010/04/sir-thomas-smiths-forgotten-english.html

Red Hand, Shared Handhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/23736570@N08/collections/72157605481399378/
The Red Hand of Ulster is a symbol which has been misrepresented and misunderstood for at least the past generation. This Flickr gallery is an ever-growing collection of images of cross community, non-political, non-paramilitary usages of the Red Hand of Ulster – a symbol which should be reclaimed and restored to mainstream usage.

(With thanks to the many people who have sent me images to include here)” alt=””>

Red Hand, Shared Handhttp://ping.fm/Iif5B
The Red Hand of Ulster is a symbol which has been misrepresented and misunderstood for at least the past generation. This Flickr gallery is an ever-growing collection of images of cross community, non-political, non-paramilitary usages of the Red Hand of Ulster – a symbol which should be reclaimed and restored to mainstream usage.

(With thanks to the many people who have sent me images to include here)

Blogroll

The Sinn Fein Ard Fheis will be moved from November to June in order to amend the party policy around abortion rights to back the recommendation of the Joint Oireachtas Committee. The Sinn Fein President, Mary Loy McDonald said; “Today I put two proposals to the the Ard Chomhairle. The first was to move the party’s 2018 Ard Fheis from November to June. The […]

It was the 19th April 1954, Easter Monday, when the boys of Holy Cross scaled the heights of local schools’ football competition to win the Northern Ireland Schools’ FA Senior Cup. On that occasion, the Ardoyne boys defeated Belfast Technical 2-1 at Solitude to win the school’s first and only Schools’ Cup title at that level, a remarkable feat given that the […]

On St Patrick’s Day morning I found myself in what felt like the arctic tundra but was actually Belfast’s Titanic Quarter. The occasion was to cheer on some friends who were running the Craic 10k race. The biting wind and snow just added to the desolate gloom of the place. Now to be fair it was bad weather in most places, but I have been to the Titanic Quart […]

Breaking….. I had just filed a piece below headlined “brinkmanship on the border “ when the Irish Times reported that that the British had agreed to accept a legal draft text containing the “ backstop” option 3 on keeping Northern Ireland in alignment with the EU after Brexit as part of transition terms for exiting the Union. RTE also has the story There […]

Another day, another doubt. After a weekend of sherpa preparations for the EU summit on Thursday and Friday, both sides are still unsure they can reach an agreed position by tomorrow night on transition terms and duration for the UK’s departure from the EU. From the Irish Times preview of the David/Barnier meeting, it’s clear that the Irish government n […]

IRA informer Sean O’Callaghan’s life and legacy will be marked by senior representatives of the British and Irish states on Wednesday. They will be joined by many of his friends in London, where he made his life and from where he gave invaluable advice to David Trimble about how to deal with his former close colleagues in the IRA. The former IRA commander ga […]

It is clear that there are economic and social challenges facing Northern Ireland’s second city, and that little is being done to address them. So what type of solutions could be pursued to enable Derry to fulfil its potential as a key economic generator for the north west of the island ? Here are some suggestions : 1. Acknowledge the Problem The first step […]

Came across this good Noam Chomsky quote today: The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. It rung a bell for me given our obsession around flags, bonfires, Irish language act etc. Not that […]

Brexit talks will become more intensive over the next six months and will feature a greater focus in the Irish border, according to the EU side. This week looks likes providing one of those so-called crunch moments when a key Brexit decision is reached in black and white but with grey edges. The UK are hoping for agreement on a transition period longer tha […]

Today people will be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in Irish pubs from Hong Kong to Panama. But did you ever wonder how Irish pubs spread to the ends of the earth? The fascinating backstory is explained in the St. Patrick’s Day special of The Irish Passport podcast. The Irish pub empire began in the 1990s, when Guinness and The Irish Pub Company came up with […]

Well it’s St Patrick’s Day after all and by the time many of you will read this, we’ll know if we’ve landed the Grand Slam. England cannot wait to get back to Twickenham. Back home. Back where they do not lose. At least certainly not in Eddie Jones’s time. This is a day when distinct identities can be safely contested with no holds barred within a reconciled […]

Nick Garbutt over on Scope NI has an excellent article on health spending and the challenges facing us in the future First to the budget. Secretary of State Karen Bradley’s written statement commits to a 5.5% uplift on last year’s allocation. This sounds terrific. But it is important to remember that the increase is based on last year’s starting position. Ho […]

The DUP, UUP and PUP groups on Belfast City Council launched the Towards a Respectful Future document this morning in Belfast City Hall. The Councillors present were Lee Reynolds, John Kyle, Billy Hutchinson, George Dorrian and Jim Rodgers. The full report is available here but some of the key findings were •The vast majority of bonfires and associated activ […]

Join the Tony Robbins and Oprah Winfrey of Northern Ireland, local motivational speaker Alex Kane and Irish News happiness correspondent Allison Morris for a night of positivity. We can’t promise firewalks or group hugs but we can promise you a great night of debate and entertainment as we find reasons to be cheerful 20 years on from the Good Friday Agreemen […]

Noel Whelan in the Irish Times today repeats the case for Sinn Fein to take their seats at Westminster – but only after a general election for which the end of abstention would be in their manifesto. This differs from the plea by the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee who recently wrote that ..the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, ventured to call on the party on Wednesday […]

The Taoiseach. Leo Varadkar, and his ministerial colleagues landed into the United States this week as the Trump White House is embroiled in turmoil. This St. Patrick’s week isn’t at all that strange, however, in the new, unprecedented political reality ushered in when the American people chose the bombastic billionaire over Hillary Clinton nearly a year and […]

Interesting response from Sinn Fein over the latest boundary changes. Francie Molloy in the Independent writes… Sinn Féin warned at the time that the DUP would attempt to insert this issue into their negotiations with the Tories so it came as little surprise to us that the new proposals were virtually indistinguishable from the DUP’s. The Boundary Commission […]

‘Beneath the Harp and Crown,’ a new play by Philip Orr, premieres next week in four venues. The play was developed in collaboration with Decorum NI, a charity based support group for veterans of the security forces and their families who served during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. The play is billed as addressing the question, ‘Can a UDR veteran come to […]

Traditionally the St Patrick’s Day pilgrimages to America have been occasions for everybody involved in our politics to be on their best behaviour and bask in waves of Irish-American blarney. Not so much this year, as Arlene Foster and Mary Lou McDonald have been left off the White House invitees list for failing to clinch the deal to get Stormont going aga […]

Cathal Haughey is Dublin Organizer of Ógra Fianna Fáil and committee member of DCU4UNITY From the 7th-9th of March, Dublin City University students voted overwhelmingly in favor (76%) for their Students’ Union to support Irish reunification. The campaign was run by ‘DCU4Unity’ and had cross-party support from the DCU branches of Ógra Fhianna Fáil, Ógra Shinn […]